Of football jocks, ex-cons and all-around bad boys

She’s conquered the Greek scene already, so what’s the next assignment in College Life 101 for Veronica? Bust out the face paint and pom-poms — it’s college football.

Stretching her “friend discount” a few steps further, Veronica’s called to the assistance of a Hearst football player, Kurt, who happens to be the boyfriend of Trisha, who is a friend of Piz, Wallace’s roommate. Who said making friends at a new school isn’t easy?

Kurt’s had his playbook stolen and is terrified of the repercussions, especially since he’s attending college on a full-ride athletic scholarship despite being sidelined by an injury. Can anyone say “dispensible”?

• “Pop,” short for Popovich or some such name that makes “Pop” a convenient nickname. He’s Kurt’s best pal from the football team, and one of the last people to be in Kurt’s room the day the playbook disappeared.

• The girlfriend herself, Trisha. C’mon — how tempting must it be to get Kurt to forget football and spend all his time with her?

Fortunately, since Veronica’s only been through, oh about a billion similar cases, it’s just a matter of going through the motions to get to the bottom of this mystery. The subplots are much more interesting …

For example — Weevil for hire. Yay! Weevil’s out of jail and intent on keeping a job so he can stay that way. His first post-jail job doesn’t pan out — OK, so maybe he sabotages it. Veronica feels for him and wants Keith to hire Weevil as her replacement at Mars Investigations. Did all that time at the Phi Smoka Toka sorority house last week do something to her brain?

Keith says Weevil never struck him as ideal secretary material, what with the murder charges and all. “Assault,” Veronica corrects him. “See, he’s not even a good murderer,” Keith replies. Dear Old Dad is reluctant but finally lets Veronica convince him that Weevil can do the job. Is this the part where hilarity should ensue? Let’s wait and see …

In other non-mystery-related news, Veronica is testing Logan’s trustworthiness by putting her spy gear to use on relationship issues. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t think this is a bad idea? This girl can solve criminal cases left and right, but can’t see that spying on her boyfriend is eventually going to backfire? Go figure.

But, as Veronica reasons, there’s no sense in all this expensive equipment going to waste. She tracks Logan’s calls with a GPS device in his cell phone and kicks into psycho — er, “concerned” — mode when Logan skips out on visiting her at her library job in favor of some party where he’s said to be “getting lucky.” OK, maybe I’m with her on this one. Just a little bit. After all, when you have a weakness for “unreformable bad boys,” as Keith tells her, you’ve got to keep a certain level of control, no?

He’s getting lucky alright — in a casino sort of way, not in the after-prom sort of way. Some kid named Mercer has a gambling operation going, and no one is amused to see Veronica there — especially not Logan. She can’t even fib her way out of this one.

The campus rape mystery hasn’t gone forgotten, as two opposing student groups are duking it out over their right to talk about the situation on Piz’s radio show. The granola-crunching, feminist sisters of the Lilith House are not happy with a spread in the campus’ Lampoon newspaper, run by chauvenistic college boys who are too dumb to care that they’re incriminating themselves in the ongoing rapes.

Also upset by this mess is the dean, who thinks one of these groups must be behind the recent vandalism of his car. He also is none too pleased with Veronica for refusing to give up her source on the sorority marijuana-growing story. If only there was a way to make everybody happy …

In true Veronica style, she comes back with a one-two punch that:

1. Solves the playbook mystery. (Trisha stole it, but the other suspects are equally guilty for what eventually happens to it.)

2. Uncovers who vandalized the dean’s car — his goth son.

3. Gets Weevil a non-secretarial job — fixing the dean’s car, which leads to a full-time maintenance gig at Hearst … so he can be on campus with the rest of the gang. Sneaky, sneaky writers …

4. AND she smoothes things over with Logan. Debugging his car before his planned trip to Mexico is probably her best move yet.

I think that makes it a 1-2-3-4 punch. And with Logan turning down his trip to Mexico in order to stay home and spend more time with his best girl, somebody declare this girl the winner. After all, with that unreformable bad boy on her hands, this may be the biggest victory she’ll get out of this relationship.